PRIME
In which Benno of Uppsala confides certain things, others are confided by Berengar of Arundel, and Adso learns the meaning o true penitence.

The horrible event had upset the life of the community. The confusion caused by the discovery of the corpse had interrupted the holy office. The abbot promptly sent the monks back to the choir, to pray for the soul of their brother.
The monks’ voices were broken. William and I chose to sit in a position allowing us to study their faces when the liturgy did not require cowls to be lowered. Immedi?ately we saw Berengar’s face. Pale, drawn, glistening with sweat.
Next to him we noticed Malachi. Dark, frowning, impassive. Beside Malachi, equally impassive, was the face of the blind Jorge. We observe, on the other hand, the nervous movements of Benno of Uppsala, the rhetoric scholar we had men the previous day in the scriptorium; and we caught his rapid glance at Malachi. “Benno is nervous, Berengar is frightened,” William remarked. “They must be questioned right away.”
“Why?” I asked ingenuously.
“Ours is a hard task,” William said. “A hard task, that of the inquisitor, who must strike the weakest, and at their moment of greatest weakness.”
In fact, as soon as the office was over, we caught up with Benno, who was heading for the library. The young man seemed vexed at hearing William call him, and he muttered some faint pretext about work to be done. He seemed in a hurry to get to the scriptorium. But my master reminded him that he was carrying out an inquiry at the abbot’s behest, and led Benno into the cloister. We sat on the inner wall, between two columns. Looking from time to time toward the Aedificium, Benno waited for William to speak.
“Well, then,” William asked, “what was said that day when you were discussing Adelmo’s marginalia with Berengar, Venantius, Malachi, and Jorge?”
“You heard it yesterday. Jorge was saying that it is not licit to use ridiculous images to decorate books that contain the truth. And Venantius observed that Aristot?le himself had spoken of witticisms and plays on words as instruments better to reveal the truth, and hence laughter could not be such a bad thing if it could become a vehicle of the truth. Jorge said that, as far as he could recall, Aristotle had spoken of these things in his Poetics, when discussing metaphor. And these were in themselves two disturbing circumstances, first be?cause the book of the Poetics, unknown to the Christian world for such a long time, which was perhaps by divine decree, had come to us through the infidel Moors. …”
“But it was translated into Latin by a friend of the angelic doctor of Aquino,” William said.
“That’s what I said to him,” Benno replied, immedi?ately heartened. “I read Greek badly and I could study that great book only, in fact, through the translation of William of Moerbeke. Yes, that’s what I said. But Jorge added that the second cause for uneasiness is that in the book the Stagirite was speaking of poetry, which is infima doctrina and which exists on figments. And Venantius said that the psalms, too, are works of poetry and use metaphors; and Jorge became enraged because he said the psalms are works of divine inspiration and use metaphors to convey the truth, while the works of the pagan poets use metaphors to convey falsehood and for purposes of mere pleasure, a remark that greatly offended me. …”
“Why?”
“Because I am a student of rhetoric, and I read many pagan poets, and I know ... or I believe that their words have conveyed also truths naturaliter Christian. … In short, at that point, if I recall correctly, Venantius spoke of other books and Jorge became very angry.”
“Which books?”
Benno hesitated. “I don’t remember. What does it matter which books were spoken of?”
“It matters a great deal, because here we are trying to understand what has happened among men who live among books, with books, from books, and so their words on books are also important.”
“It’s true,” Benno said, smiling for the first time, his face growing almost radiant. “We live for books. A sweet mission m this world dominated by disorder and decay. Perhaps, then, you will understand what happened on that occasion. Venantius, who knows ... who knew Greek very well, said that Aristotle had dedicated the second book of the Poetics specifically to laughter, and that if a philosopher of such greatness had devoted a whole book to laughter, then laughter must be important. Jorge said that many fathers had devoted entire books to sin, which is an important thing, but evil; and Venantius said that as far as he knew, Aristotle had spoken of laughter as something good and an instru?ment of truth; and then Jorge asked him contemptuous?ly whether by any chance he had read this book of Aristotle; and Venantius said that no one could have read it, because it has never been found and is perhaps lost forever. And, in fact, William of Moerbeke never had it in his hands. Then Jorge said that if it had not been found, this was because it had never been written, because Providence did not want futile things glorified. I wanted to calm everyone’s spirit, because Jorge is easily angered and Venantius was speaking deliberately to provoke him, and so I said that in the part of the Poetics that we do know, and in the Rhetoric, there are to be found many wise observations on witty riddles, and Venantius agreed with me. Now, with us was Pacificus of Tivoli, who knows the pagan poets very well, and he said that when it comes to these witty riddles, no one surpasses the African poets. He quoted, in fact, the riddle of the fish, of Symphosius:

Est domus in terris, clara quae voce resultat.
Ipsa domus resonat, tacitus sed non sonat hospes.
Ambo tamen currunt, hospes simul et domus una.

“At this point Jorge said that Jesus had urged our speech to be yes or no, for anything further came from the Evil One; and that to mention fish it was enough to say ‘fish,’ without concealing the notion under lying sounds. And he added that it did not seem to him wise to take the Africans as models. ... And then ...”
“Then?”
“Then something happened that I didn’t understand. Berengar began to laugh. Jorge reproached him, and he said he was laughing because it had occurred to him that if one sought carefully among the Africans, quite different riddles would be found, and not so easy as the one about the fish. Malachi, who was present, came furious, took Berengar by the cowl, and sent him off to his tasks. ... Berengar, you know, is his assistant. ...”
“And after that?”
“After that, Jorge put an end to the argument by going away. We all went off to our occupations, but as I was working, I saw first Venantius, then Adelmo ap?proach Berengar and ask him something. From the distance I saw he was parrying their questions, but in the course of the day both went back to him. And then that evening I saw Berengar and Adelmo confabulating in the cloister before entering the refectory. There, that’s all I know.”
“You know, in fact, that the two persons who have recently died in mysterious circumstances had asked something of Berengar,” William said.
Benno answered uncomfortably, “I didn’t say that! I told you what happened that day, because you asked me. ...” He reflected a moment, then hastily added, “But if you want to know my opinion, Berengar spoke to them of something in the library, and that is where you should search.”
“Why do you think of the library? What did Berengar mean about seeking among the Africans? Didn’t he mean that the African poets should be more widely read?”
“Perhaps. So it seemed. But then why should Malachi have become furious? After all, he’s the one who de?cides whether or not a volume of African poets is given out to be read. But I know one thing: anyone leafing through the catalogue of books will often find, among the collocations that only the librarian understands, one that says ‘Africa,’ and I have even found one that said ‘finis Africae,’ the end of Africa. Once I asked for a book that bore that indication, I can’t recall which book, though the title had aroused my curiosity; and Malachi told me the books with that indication had been lost. This is what I know. And this is why I say you’re right, check on Berengar, and check when he goes up into the library. You never can tell.”
“You never can tell,” William concluded, dismissing him. Then he began strolling with me in the cloister and remarked that, first of all, Berengar had once again been the subject of his brothers’ murmuring; second, Benno seemed eager to direct us to the library. I observed that perhaps he wanted us to discover there things he, too, wanted to know; and William said this was probably the case, but it was also possible that in directing us toward the library he wanted to keep us away from some other place. Which? I asked. And William said he did not know, perhaps the scriptorium, perhaps the kitchen, or the choir, or the dormitory, or the infirmary. I remarked that the previous day it was he, William, who had been fascinated by the library, and his answer was that he wanted to be fascinated by the things he chose and not as others advised him. But the library should be kept under observation, he went on, and at this point it would not be a bad idea to try to get into it somehow. Circumstances now authorized his curiosity, within the bounds of politeness and respect for the customs and laws of the abbey.
We left the cloister. Servants and novices were com?ing from the church after Mass. And as we walked along the west side of the church, we glimpsed Berengar coming out of the transept door and crossing the cemetery toward the Aedificium. William called him, he stopped, and we overtook him. He was even more distraught than when we had seen him in choir, and William obviously decided to exploit, as he had with Benno, this state of his spirit.
“So it seems that you were the last to see Adelmo alive,” he said.
Berengar staggered, as if he were about to fall in a faint. “I?” he asked in a weak voice. William had dropped his question as if by chance, perhaps because Benno had told him of seeing the two conferring in the cloister after vespers. But it must have struck home, and clearly Berengar was thinking of another, really final meeting, because he began to speak in a halting voice.
“How can you say that? I saw him before going off to bed, like everyone else!”
Then William decided it might be worthwhile to press him without respite. “No, you saw him again, and you know more things than you wish to admit. But there are two deaths involved here, and you can no longer be silent. You know very well there are many ways to make a :person speak!”
William had often said to me that, even when he had been an inquisitor, he had always avoided torture; but Berengar misunderstood him (or William wanted to be misunderstood). In any case, the move was effective.
“Yes, yes,” Berengar said, bursting into a flood of tears, “I saw Adelmo that evening, but I saw him already dead!”
“How?” William asked. “At the foot of the hill?”
“No, no, I saw him here in the cemetery, he was moving among the graves, a ghost among ghosts. I met him and realized at once that I did not have a living man before me: his face was a corpse’s, his eyes already beheld the eternal punishment. Naturally, it was only the next morning, when I learned of his death, that I understood I had encountered his ghost, but even at that moment I realized I was having a vision and that there was a damned soul before me, one of the lemures. ... Oh, Lord, what a gravelike voice he had as he spoke to me!”
“And what ............